13 Facts We Had No Idea About, and Now, We Can’t Forget Them

Today, there are many ways to learn something new about the world and ordinary things: you can read books, talk to experts, or google the information. And sometimes, we make small discoveries accidentally, even if we hadn’t thought about these things previously.

We at CHEERY love broadening the outlook for ourselves and our readers with new knowledge that can change everything we knew before.

Dogs have special buds that can taste water.

Such taste buds on the tip of the tongue are also found in cats, mostly predators. And people don’t have them, so water seems tasteless to us.

There’s a reason why we never see baby pigeons.

It’s simple: most baby pigeons never leave the nest until they have enough feathers and become adults.

Also, the nests are usually in places we can’t see: roofs, bridges, walls of tall buildings. And baby pigeons grow quicker than other birds.

Paris McDonald’s restaurants have reusable glasses and boxes for French fries.

This way, they are trying to reduce the amount of waste which is harmful for the environment. British McDonald’s are also moving to more eco-friendly packs. In some restaurants, people can order hot drinks in reusable glasses from polypropylene that are later sorted, cleaned and disinfected to be used again.

William Shakespeare first used the name Jessica.

This name was first used in this form by Shakespeare in his play The Merchant of Venice (1596). Before the middle of the 20th century, the name Jessica was rarely used, but from 1985 to 1995, it became the most popular girl name in the US.

Corn “sweats”, making us feel hotter.

Corn releases water through the leaves. Big corn increase the humidity level in agricultural regions dramatically, so people feel much hotter there. One acre of corn can add between 3,000 to 4,000 gallons of water a day to the atmosphere.

The word “to Google” was first used in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

In episode 4 of the final season, the character named Willow asks Buffy, “Have you googled her yet?” Several months later, in 2002, the American Dialect Society named “to google” 2002’s most useful new word. Soon after that, it was included in the Oxford Dictionary.

Lobsters were fed to prisoners.

The food we know as a delicacy today hasn’t always been one. Just a couple of centuries ago, lobsters were caught in great numbers and fed to prisoners, students, and slaves. In Massachusetts, some servants allegedly sought to avoid lobster-heavy diets by including stipulations in their contracts that they would only be served the shellfish twice a week.

In Australia, there are wrap-around spiders.

This is a name of the spider that can flatten and wrap its body around tree limbs for camouflage. This is how they avoid predator attacks.

Goldfish can recognize classical music.

Despite their short memory, they can tell Bach from Stravinsky. Scientists conducted a study and taught 4 goldfishes to bite a red ball in a bowl when they heard music, and then to bite a certain part of the ball, depending on the composition they heard.

The fish even had music preferences: so, one of them liked Bach more than Stravinsky.

The first SMS was sent almost 30 years ago.

On December 3rd, 1992, engineer Neil Papworth typed “merry Christmas” on a computer and sent the first SMS message to the cellphone of Vodafone director, Richard Jarvis.

Lady bugs can produce bad-smelling chemicals from their knees.

This is their protection from predators. Their color also helps them avoid predators. Orange, red, and black colors are associated with an unpleasant smell by predators, so they try to avoid them.

Chickens lay not only white or brown eggs, but also green and blue.

Where do green and blue eggs come from? The color is determined by the breed of the chicken. Originally, all eggs are white, and those that are laid in shades other than white have pigments deposited on them as the eggs travel through the hen’s oviduct.

Lions are color-blind, so zebra’s stripes act as camouflage.

Zebra’s stripes act as camouflage: when they are hiding in tall grass, the stripes blend in with it. And color isn’t important because lions, zebras’ worst enemies, are color-blind. An entire herd can even confuse lions because due to the stripes, they don’t see separate animals, but a big cloud of something.

What unusual fact about our world do you know?